Take Your Shirt Off and Cry
by AkatsukiLover465
Summary: A series of snapshots in the life of Hyuuga Hinata. (Drabble, trans!Hinata)


_What are little girls made of?_

She is five years old when she decides that dresses are stupid, and princesses are stupid, and baby dolls are stupid (even though that's all she got for her birthday).

Enviously she looks at Neji-nii's matchbox cars and his overalls that he's allowed to get dirty.

 _What are little boys made of?_

She is still five when she goes to kindergarten and has to learn to go to the girls' bathroom and not the boys'. She goes in the boys' one anyway, sticking her nose high in the air and declaring loudly (for the first time without a stutter) that she "don't wanna use the same toilet as the stupid sissy _girlies_ ".

It takes promises of matchbox cars and building blocks at playtime to get her to use the proper restroom.

She gets a note sent home to her parents.

It is the first time her father yells at her.

(It is far from the last.)

.

She is seven when a group of boys won't let her play kickball with them because she "ain't nothing but a frilly little girl—why don't she go and play house like she's good at?"

Her anger overcomes her shyness, and she delivers a solid kick to one little boy's ribs. He doubles over in pain and she doesn't bother to hide the victorious smirk plastered on her round face.

She's scolded by the teacher later (Iruka-sensei's face turns an alarming shade of red as he examines the bruises she left behind on the kid's stomach and chest and listens to the boy's pathetic sobbing). It was _so_ worth it.

.

She grows up a little bit, and learns the difference between girls and boys.

It _hurts_.

(In a strange way that she's not yet old enough to understand and possibly never will.)

In class, she sits at a table with the boy Kiba, who's wild and loud and boisterous the way she can never bring herself to be, and Shino, who's quiet and serene and very different from them both.

They never treat her like she's a girl.

But they don't treat her as a boy, either.

They treat her like a _friend_ , and that's what matters.

She tells them nothing of herself, and in turn they never ask.

It's the first time she has friends, and she doesn't want to spoil it. She always ruins these kind of things for herself and she's growing tired of losing people she'd never even had.

(Still it feels like someone's stabbed a knife into her side and twisted it.)

.

She is fourteen. She's young, and her body's young, but she's developing faster than anyone else in her grade. She's the only girl in her grade who doesn't _want_ her body to develop, who wishes that she could go back to the way she was when she was small, her hair short and her chest flat.

She is fourteen, when she stands before her bedroom mirror and the world stops turning.

Her hair is long now, soft tresses of violet falling to just above her rear, bangs cut straight across her forehead in the hime-style like they always have been.

She hates it. Like she's never hated anything before.

But Sakura told her to grow it out _("Oh, Hinata-chan, your hair is beautiful! You should grow it long, like mine! Get all the boys, ne?")_ , and she didn't want to somehow insult the pink-haired girl. So it was, until now, untouched.

But now she wields a pair of scissors in shaking hands, and is slowly convincing herself that she can do this.

That is, until she takes off her jacket (it wouldn't do to get it dirty), and begins to cry for a reason that has nothing and everything to do with her hair.

Angrily, she yanks the tight undershirt from her body, rips the stupidly lacy bra from her chest, and stares, tears streaming freely down her porcelain cheeks.

In a rare case of unbridled rage, pure and hot, she clenches her hands into fists, chest and shoulders heaving with the force of her fury. She draws back, perfectly manicured nails digging fiercely into her palms.

She punches the mirror.

Glass explodes everywhere, tinkling softly as it hits the ground in hundreds of tiny pieces. She doesn't even notice that her knuckles are cut and bleeding—she's too busy burying her head in her arms and sobbing because she'll never be like Neji-nii, not when her body is like this.

A soft knock.

"Hinata-sama?"

The paper door makes no noise as it slides open and Neji-nii steps in.

She raises her head to acknowledge him, eyes watery and red, unabashedly exposing her naked chest (it's nothing he hasn't seen before and nothing he won't see again).

He says nothing further, only nods in silent understanding.

(Nii-san knows pain better than his own hand, and she would do well to remember that.)

He picks up the scissors—forgotten on the floor with her jacket—and sits behind her, heedless of the shards of mirror. She worries over him slightly, fussing over his bare legs even in this state.

"You must be c-careful, Brother." She rasps, voice trembling. "You could hurt yourself." _Because of me_ , is left unsaid, and they are both silently grateful for it.

 _Snip._

Tendrils of hair fall from her head, mingling on the hardwood floor with the bits of glass, and soon her hair looks much as it did when she was younger, a bit shorter in the back, but she certainly isn't complaining.

"T-Thank you, Neji-nii-san."

He just nods again.

Quietly, he unwraps the bandages from his arms, and uses them to bind her chest. Tears of gratitude stream down her face, the liquid cutting grey-black streaks through the layers of makeup that Sakura had insisted upon her buying.

She flashes him a watery smile, to which he shrugs indifferently, but she knows he cares.

With a gentle hand, he wipes away her tears, smudging her mascara even further across her cheeks.

"Don't worry about it, Hinata-kun."

Kun always sounded better than chan, anyway.

.

She is nearly fifteen when Sakura calls her a fag, in front of Naruto (who she's admired for so long), shouting at the top of her voice to get her point across.

"You're a _girl,_ Hinata-chan! Are you doing this for attention? It's _sick,_ Hinata! _Sick!_ "

Even though all she had done was told the truth.

She goes home in tears, clawing her chest vainly, as if she can tear her breasts away if she scratches hard enough. Her nails (polished to perfection, gleaming with a glittery pink color) break off, and her skin bleeds, but she doesn't care, can't bring herself to care, because she is a _boy_.

"Hinata-kun?" A voice asks, the deep rumbling voice of her cousin, who always makes things better.

Who always calls her kun instead of chan, and calls her his brother, not sister.

"Neji-nii?"

She wants to say, but can't, because her voice comes out garbled and choked and tearful.

He takes her silence as consent, and steps through the open door, holding something in his hands. It's black and resembles a tank top, and she shoves it away, because _those are girls' clothes._

"It's a chest compressor, Hinata-kun."

"T-thank you," she manages through her fits of crying.

And she lets him put it on her, and lets him take her up in his arms and hold her the way he did when she was very small, when her hair was short and her chest was flat.

.

It is months later when it happens—the thing she'd managed to avoid for so long and thought (had hoped, foolishly hoped) she wasn't going to get.

It comes in a wash of blood and pain and betrayal.

She cries every day until it's over, each cramp in her stomach a taunting echo.

 _Girl._

 _Girl._

 _Girl._

It comes again the next month.

.

She is fifteen when her father finds her, zipping up her binder, and he begins to weep, asking her mournfully where he went wrong.

He thinks it some kind of disease, that she wants to be a man one day. He thinks it his fault, for being too hard on her. His fault, that he never remarried, and she never had a mother.

It's so frustrating she could scream.

And then he gets angry.

"What's wrong with you? Why are you like this? Can't you be more like Hanabi? Hanabi isn't like this! Why are you? Why are you so ungrateful?"

Neji-nii is her savior, standing up for her each time when words fail her and all she can do is cry.

 _Smack._

It's the first time that her father has ever laid a hand on any of them, and they all sense the change in the air when he does. The sound of their trust in each other shattering is nearly audible.

But Neji strikes right back, not with fists but with words: insults that send her father reeling.

They threaten to leave, and never come back. Her hand tucked in his, they nearly walk out the door and don't return.

But her father stops them, saying that they mean too much to him.

That Hanabi needs both her big brothers.

…

He isn't forgiven.

But he is somewhere close.

He is supportive eventually, if for the wrong reasons, and agrees to send her to Neji-nii's school—the one for boys and only boys.

She can't quite suppress the giddy smile that pulls at her lips when he tells her, laying a meaty hand on her shoulder, and telling her firmly, "Make me proud, son." She agrees, nodding rapidly.

The next day he places her on hormone replacement therapy, finally making use of the buckets of money they possess but never seem to spend.

She feels distant. Above it all. She's walking on air.

.

It comes crashing down soon enough.

.

She is sixteen when Uchiha-san finds out her secret.

He's confused, at first, because her jaw is strong and her voice is deep and she's even more muscular than him—how can she be biologically a girl?

He's disgusted, she can see it in his eyes, and she waits for him to call her names the way Sakura did so long ago _(dyke, fag, unnatural)._

The insults don't come, and he looks sincere when he promises to keep it a secret. Well, as sincere as Sasuke can come across as.

He doesn't understand.

Even though she explains it to him over and over again, he still thinks that all this is is crossdressing.

He doesn't understand that she's a boy like him, just in the form of a girl. He doesn't know what it's like to be a prisoner in his own body, and he never will, not the way she does.

He doesn't understand.

She starts to think that no one does, except maybe Neji-nii.

Always Neji-nii.

.

She is still sixteen when Uchiha-san has too much to drink, and shoves his hand up her shirt, ripping her binder off her and groping her unashamedly.

He tries to kiss her, telling her in his deep voice, husky and thick, that no girl has ever refused him.

She wants to reply, "I'm not a girl," but words fail her and all she can do is cry, begging through her tears for someone to save her.

No one does.

He sticks his hands down her briefs, then pulls them off entirely, forcing himself inside her.

There is blood and there is pain and there is crying.

He doesn't stop despite her protests, keeps going on and makes her feel disgusting and used and worthless, every movement of his hips reminding her of what he has and she doesn't.

Slut.

Whore.

 _Girl._

When he's done, he passes out on the floor, leaving her to gather her clothes and go home even more broken than before.

.

Neji holds her in his arms (as he so often does, now) and lets her cry, soaking his favorite shirt in the process. She tells her story, sobbing and blubbering, and together they mourn what was lost that night.

Silently, she wonders whether she has anything left anymore but Neji-nii.

.


End file.
